In this Spotlight, we meet Fran Ferris, co-founder of Epona, a Sheffield-based startup using AI to transform the way social care is delivered. Drawing on more than 20 years’ experience in housing and homelessness, as well as her own lived experience as an unpaid family carer, Fran has built a business with a big ambition: to improve quality of life for people with additional needs while reducing the strain on health and social care systems.

The personal and professional passion that sparked Epona

Fran co-founded Epona with Darren, a data architect whom she describes as “a genius”, and whose technical expertise has been vital in shaping the company’s foundations.

The idea for Epona grew out of Fran’s experience of caregiving in both a professional and personal context. She has worked within the social care sector, primarily in homelessness and housing, for over two decades. Fran has also supported her parents through serious illnesses and more recently has begun to navigate a different part of the system with her young son.

A consultancy project with a local authority on its unpaid carer strategy brought her professional insights and personal experiences together.

“I asked 100-150 unpaid carers about their own experiences – what support they had and what care plans should look like. Honestly, combined with my own personal experiences and frustrations, it left me feeling that the system was utterly broken.” Fran reflects.

These frustrations and the deep passion that Fran has for caregiving in both paid and unpaid capacities, set her on a path to finding a solution.

Just under a year into her startup journey, she admits the experience has been intense, and far more demanding than initially expected.

“Ignorance was bliss! Darren handles all the tech and I do all the other stuff,” explains Fran, “but I quickly saw there’s a lot more ‘other stuff’ than I realised! 

“The learning curve has been amazing though and I’ve had huge support from the Cooper Project, the other founders on it and the experts I’ve been able to speak to.”

Proactive, personal care plans powered by AI

The ultimate catalyst for Epona came when Fran discovered the Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) framework – a scientific method that helps people with additional needs improve their quality of life by understanding the communication behind behaviours. While effective, PBS is expensive and time-consuming, requiring specialist practitioners and weeks of assessment and data gathering.

“I was talking to Darren about it and we both saw how useful this would be in homelessness and other settings. If you’ve got good enough data, it would tell you why someone is behaving in that way and what they’re trying to communicate through their behaviour.

“To cut a long story short, this got us to asking: can we use AI to figure this out?”

The answer they arrived at was yes. Epona’s system uses AI to integrate disparate information from multiple sources, such as observational notes, voice or text notes from the person receiving care, images, and direct input from carers and families – analysing it to uncover insights about the causes of behaviour and what can be done to address what manifests through that behaviour.

The first version of the platform embeds both the PBS framework and the PERMA framework, another evidence-based approach focused on well-being and quality of life.

Whilst the go-to-market strategy targets high-acuity care settings, the company’s  long-term vision is to reach other sectors, including housing and homelessness support, with customised user interfaces but a consistent back-end system.

At its core, the technology aims to make proactive care possible, identifying patterns before crises occur and giving professionals, unpaid carers and the individual at the heart of the plan, the insights they need to achieve better outcomes.

“This is about shifting the power imbalance where care can only be provided by a very prescriptive group of professionals. We’re hopeful this will give that power back to the individual receiving care, and their families.”

Fran continues,

“It’s about restoring people’s identities, enabling them to achieve their aspirations, irrespective of their diagnosis or the level of care they require. If we can prevent crises, we can improve lives and hopefully bring down costs for the NHS and social care, not just in support ratios but in hospital admissions too.”

Building ethical and responsible AI

Fran and the Epona team are deeply aware of the sensitivities involved in applying AI to health and social care, where data is highly sensitive and matters of life and death are at the forefront. From the start, they have prioritised ethics and responsibility, collaborating with Oxford Project: The Responsible Use of Generative AI in Social Care to put robust safeguards in place.

“We recognise that there are concerns around AI and our response is a set of guardrails that have informed how the system is built, data protection and how we communicate in a clear and transparent way, and we’ll continue to adapt as and when new things come up.”

Epona’s approach includes keeping a “human in the loop” for all decision-making and tailoring the system’s chatbot interactions according to the user’s job role. These safeguards ensure that AI augments, rather than replaces, human expertise.

With the technology nearing completion, a commercial version is expected to launch to early adopters in the coming weeks. This follows a successful pilot using synthetic data with two care providers, which focused on the UI. Fran has some clear goals for the next year: to see the platform adopted by at least five medium-to-large care organisations; to have progressed in developing the UI for housing providers; and to begin engaging commissioners to explore how this approach can be embedded into their commissioning frameworks for housing and care.

Even with such a clear route plotted, Fran continues to value Sheffield’s collaborative culture and is keen to connect with others working in similar industries, always open to where a conversation can lead. She emphasises,

“The value of connection and the value of ecosystem is incredibly important so I’m really interested in having conversations with people working around digital health, social care, housing and MedTech.”

With lived experience driving its purpose, a strong ethical foundation, and robust technology, Epona is a startup with the potential to change lives and redefine care delivery in the UK. You can connect with Fran on LinkedIn and you can learn more about Epona on the website: www.eponacares.com.